To my great regret I can state nothing very clear regarding these problems. The attempt to intellectualise all psychical problems is infinitely interesting, and leads to a fairly clear conception, by which everything is explained by a mechanism reflected in a mirror, which is the consciousness. But we remain perplexed, and we ask ourselves whether this clearness of perception is not somewhat artificial, whether affectivity, emotivity, tendency, will, are really all reduced to perceptions, or whether they are not rather irreducible elements which should be added to the consciousness. Does not, for instance, desire represent a complement of the consciousness? Do not desire and consciousness together represent a something which does not belong to the physical domain and which forms the moral world? This question I leave unanswered.
DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS--THE RELATION SUBJECT-OBJECT
After having separated from the consciousness that which it is not, let us try to define what it is. This and the two following chapters are devoted to this study.
A theory has often been maintained with regard to the consciousness; namely, that it supposes a relation between two terms--a subject and an object, and that it consists exactly in the feeling of this relation. By subject is understood the something that has consciousness; the object is the something of which we are conscious. Every thought, we are told, implies subject and object, the representer and the represented, the _sentiens_ and the _sensum_--the one active, the other passive, the active acting on the passive, the _ego_ opposed to the _non ego_.
This opinion is almost legitimised by current language. When speaking of our states of consciousness, we generally say, "I am conscious; it is I who have consciousness," and we attribute to our I, to our Ego, to our personality, the rôle of subject. But this is not a peremptory argument in favour of the above opinion; it is only a presumption, and, closely examined, this presumption seems very weak.
Hitherto, when analysing the part of mind, we have employed non-committal terms: we have said that sensation implied consciousness, and not that sensation implied something which is conscious.[23] The difference may appear too subtle, but it is not; it consists in taking from consciousness the notion of a subject being conscious and replacing it by the very act of consciousness.